Nancy reads me her poetry straight out of her journal.
Her crisp sentences speak like straight pins of words.
Her grammar never melts down, nor is it obscured.
On the college newspaper
she corrects our errors with pride and a hint of irritation.
“There should be a comma here.”
Her room is as neat as her sentence structure.
Her blanket always covers her bed evenly with no creases.
Her walls are blank.
The objects on her nightstand are purposeful and correct.
Even her body is evenly placed.
She wears her clothes straight through.
No curves or angles to her waist,
just pant seams in one straight line to the floor.
Nancy’s voice is both soft and skeptical.
She drinks cans of Mellow Yellow
from neat cylindrical cases,
stacked in her closet.
Her favorite films on VHS line up on the TV shelf:
Blue Velvet, Fried Green Tomatoes, Beaches, Steele Magnolias.
She’s watched them all over and over,
grinning through her favorite scenes.
This is her emotional education.
She invites us into her room to watch with her.
She sits on her bed,
and we sit in straight-backed school chairs.
Her arms fold, and she looks at us
to see if we would cry at the right spot.
When the film’s music swells in the third act.
We feel the heartache of the time past,
meeting my eyes with perfect clarity.
Now Nancy has been gone,
the same amount of time she was alive.
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